"There's been a bit of confusion in that [Ismail] once said that Assassin's Creed has an ending - that's not exactly true," he explained. "This storyline has an ending, but because all of history is open to us we see the universe as a Doctor Who type thing. There are so many possibilities we don't want to definitively end the universe, but we can have storylines that have endings."

Speaking about the most recent entry in the series, McDevitt explained that he saw Black Flag as a bridging entry in the series, offering those who wanted it a chance to say goodbye to Desmond through all the memos and trivia located in Abstergo, while setting things up for the next instalment.

"The end of the Desmond trilogy changed slightly but it was always intended to end that way. And then about two years ago we planned for another story... [But] we've moved on from specifically defining when a story will end," he revealed.

As an annualised series, we're due an announcement about where Assassin's Creed V will take place fairly soon. While McDevitt admitted that there are genuine hints in Black Flag, hidden as a "reward for completionists", he laughed off all the speculation that an email included in the game listing possible locations contains the real one: "The fans generated that list, we didn’t generate that list," he said.

Luke Karmali is IGN's UK Junior Editor. You too can revel in mediocrity by following him on Twitter.